192 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



this affected me for a moment, but not enough to 

 throw me off my guard, and I climbed quickly over 

 the edge. When we had walked back out of danger 

 we sat down upon the granite for a rest. 



In all my experience of mountaineering I have 

 never known an act of such real, profound courage 

 as this of Cotter's. It is one thing, in a moment of 

 excitement, to make a gallant leap, or hold one's nerves 

 in the iron grasp of will ; but to coolly seat 

 oneself in the door of death and silently listen for 

 the fatal summons, and this all for a friend for he 

 might easily have cast loose the lasso and saved him- 

 self requires as sublime a type of courage as I 

 know." 



One of the most difficult pieces of climbing ever 

 undertaken by a woman was that accomplished by Miss 

 Annie S. Peck, who reached the top of Mount 

 Huascaran. 1 This mountain is about 24,000 feet high, 

 and Miss Peck was awarded a gold medal by the 

 Peruvian Government in recognition of her remark- 

 able feat. The descent appears to have been excep- 

 tionally difficult, as the following extract from her 

 volume of climbing experiences will show. She says : 

 " My recollection of the descent is as of a horrible 

 nightmare, though such I never experienced. The 

 little moon seemed always at my back, casting a 

 shadow over the place where I must step. The poncho 

 would sway in the wind, and with my motion as I was 

 in the act of stepping would sometimes conceal the 

 spot where my foot should be placed. Although my 

 eye for distance is good, my foot once missed the 

 step, slipping then on the smooth slope so that I fell, 

 1 See Bibliography, 36. 



